Landing Leopard was straightforward. We got to the Burlingame Apple Store around 6:30, and inside were tons of extra Apple employees handing out T-shirts. Inside were stacks of Leopard boxes and other folks doing demos on all the Macs. I checked out Quick Look and Mail, and watched an employee demo iChat, and then it was back home to install the new OS.

After about two hours of waiting - as the install DVD had to verify itself - I was up and running on the MacBook with no problems. So here’s the quick, short list of what I’ve found cool and not so cool (the latter list is much shorter) after a few hours playing around with Leopard.

Cool:

Dashboard Web Clip

This works as advertised and I’m pretty psyched, as I can now distill several of my “first thing in the morning” websites to Dashboard Widgets. It didn’t add a widget to the library folder as I was naively hoping, however.

Stacks

This is pretty cool, but I do wish I had a bit more control - such as the size of the icons in “grid” mode or which icon is displayed on the folder in the dock - “name” is the most efficient but I don’t care for having the Address Book the stack icon. I also noticed the “fan” doesn’t work when the dock is on the left or right side of the screen. Other than that I’m liking the Stack capability - it should make browsing through applications, documents, and recent downloads much easier and faster.

iTunes-esque Finder

Big thumbs up for this one. The sidebar now has much more utility, listing common file locations. The potential of Smart Folders in the sidebar is huge. The different views will reduce the need to open multiple Finder windows to locate files. The path bar is excellent (you can double click on path bar folders to navigate to them). My one gripe: where’s “cut” for files as on Windows?

Instant Screen Sharing from the Finder

This will have to wait until I install Leopard on the Mac Mini.

Front Row: Apple TV like interface

Huge thumbs up.

RSS in Mail

This will have to wait until I install Leopard on the Mac Mini.

Quick Look

Looking through folders full of images is much faster. You can even use it to peek into text files, PDFs, and web HTML files using the space bar. Many of the short cut keys like next, open, and delete all work as expected. I can immediately see using this to browse image folders, or for finally cleaning up cluttered folders full of files that I’ve long forgotten what they contained.

Spaces

Super convenient, especially using control + arrows to switch between Spaces. F8 shows all your Spaces simultaneously, and an F9 (Expose) works in this Spaces preview mode, too.

Time Machine

I’ll have to test this out later when I install Leopard on my Mac Mini which has an external drive attached.

Not So Cool (super nitpicky gripes that are really minor in the larger scheme of things):

The Finder Menu Bar and Dock: I’m not that into the translucency of the top Finder menu bar, nor the pale blue indicator that an application is active. There’s also a strange dark shadow behind the dock icons that is quite noticeably annoying if you have a solid colored background. I think I’d want options to control the look of either or be able to set the 3D dock to the rounded corner tray thing when the dock is on the left or right side of the desktop.

Some Icons Look Lame In Cover Flow View: No fault of Apple’s, but some companies (cough - Adobe) should rethink their icon designs. A huge colored square doesn’t cut it in Cover Flow View.

Other than that, everything else is a huge thumbs up. The Finder feels faster, and the look and feel of practically everything has been tweaked slightly to improve contrast and readability. And I keep noticing other tiny things like the highlight on the buttons in the upper left corners of windows or that file transfers seem faster.

Lastly, here’s a list of applications that are known to not be Leopard-compatible. Most notable is advice to absolutely not run Disk Warrior. I was most curious about the Adobe apps, of which it seems only Acrobat is problematic. Some folks may be miffed to read that the majority of Adobe CS2 applications are “likely to encounter issues for which there is no resolution” (except, of course, ponying up for CS3).

Still, this is why I’m holding off installing Leopard on the Mac Mini for about a week (if I can last that long) since I have a pile of crucial work to be done this weekend.

Disclosure: I own a tiny amount of Apple stock.

Categories: Apple, General, Technology :: Tags: :: Trackback URL
Front Page
Previous Post: What OS X Leopard Features I’m Most Looking Forward To
Next Post: Movie Notes: Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner
Related Posts: Mac OS X Delayed Past April? :: Apple: What I’m Looking Forward To In Leopard :: OS X Leopard Release Date: October 26 :: Apple OS X Leopard: Still Thumbs Up ::